Presently, non-woven fabrics are used in automobile manufacturing for seating, carpets, air bag drapes or skirts, and as speaker cabinet covers. Typically, conventional non-woven fabrics consist of 100% polyester fibers or 100% polypropylene fibers which have been heat fused by hot calendaring. These conventional non-woven fabrics have proven to lack sufficient structural integrity, and the fibers may tend to pull apart if left exposed to higher temperature environments and/or used to support the hooked strips of hook-and-loop type fasteners such as those sold under the trade mark VELCRO™.
In addition, Motor Vehicle Safety Standard FMVSS 302 has been adopted by the automotive industry as a standard of flame retardancy for fabrics used in vehicles. Under FMVSS 302, a fabric must show in a horizontal burn test, a horizontal burn rate of a maximum of 4 inches per minute. To achieve this flame retardant standard, conventional non-woven fabrics consisting of either 100% polypropylene or 100% polyester fibers have heretofore been treated with a polybrominate diphenyl ether (PBDE's) as a flame retardant such as those sold under the trade marks Typar™ and Duon™. Recently, however, environmental concerns have prompted a trend to eliminate the use of PBDE's as flame retardants in manufacturing. In particular, there has been a growing concern over the impact of PBDE'sas a toxic material which may have not only had an adverse effect on the environment, but also on human health.